


And keep my name safe in your mouth

by 62miles



Category: SHINee
Genre: I don't know what to tag this, M/M, it's about love and relationships and communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/62miles/pseuds/62miles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just that while he looked back at Kibum over their twin Americanos with an expression of "I think I might understand but no, not really I don't but if you say so then that's okay", he never told Kibum you don't measure loneliness in sips and spoonfuls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And keep my name safe in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2013, inspired by winter.

 

 

 

 

 

The sidewalks are chalk-white with salt and the leftover patches of ice grimy with dirt. Strangers hurry both ways down the street in short and brisk strides, their noses tucked deep into scarves. But even then their breaths escape in veils and ribbons, up and over their cheeks. Everyone's got some place to be.  
  
Kibum stamps the circulation back into his feet and licks his bottom lip where it'd cracked right down the middle, the aftermath of too much time spent in an office dry as the desert.  
  
Across the street, the sun is hanging low and heavy on the naked boughs of a tree. If the complaints of the girls two spots down the line can be trusted, the bus is ten minutes late. That makes it the third time this week. Worse than the previous two times, however, the wind picks up and his cheek begins to smart. Removing one hand from the scant warmth of his coat pocket, he tugs his hat lower over his ears.  
  
Note to self: wear a jacket with a hood next time. And buy gloves.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The sky darkens as the bus chugs forward. From where he is sandwiched between a man in a faded charcoal suit and a boy with a trombone case, he has a view of the alien world outside through a pane of glass caked in a film of filth. It's a foreign city full of foreign people speaking a foreign tongue. He speaks it too, their language, the words and the order in which they should be strung up like beads on a thread, the pauses, the swells and falls; but nobody here speaks his.  
  
He's tried out a handful of Korean restaurants scattered around his workplace and his new apartment, but the chopsticks are made of cheap wood, too light against his fingers, and he overhears the waiters shouting orders to the kitchen staff in what he thinks is Mandarin. Even the meat and the vegetables taste of a foreign soil on and from which they were raised. (His efforts to cook himself don't go much better because he's already halfway to defeat when he finds himself in a corner of the local Chinese supermarket trying to find the right ingredients.)  
  
The wind blows away the last scraps of his hazy half-sleep as he steps out into the cold night. Then he trudges up the hill, gravel crunching under his heels with only the orange streetlights for company. He takes their hum and sings a major third above it, a long unsteady note.  
  
But you can't blame him.  
  
He's headed for a foreign home with a foreign bed and a foreign sort of emptiness.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
One of his first purchases after moving here is a light switch timer. He tells the woman at the check-out counter that it's for safety purposes. Sometimes he has to stay late nights at work, overnight if deadlines call for it. Sometimes he has to take short trips too, barely planned ones, a day, two days, three. It's not that he has a lot of valuables—and that's when he catches himself. The cashier is making a face as if to say, _and why is that my business?_ He fakes a cough and pulls out his wallet.  
  
Maybe if you live with a person for enough years his social incompetence eventually rubs off on you.  
  
But having that—having him—is better than not having anything at all, right? Because now there's no one to leave a light on when the sun sets too early, no one to share a meal with. No one to be unconditionally good to him and expect nothing back. _This is what I want, what I need_ , he'd tried tried to convince himself and everyone who'd listen. _This is a job opportunity of a lifetime. If I don't go I'll regret it for the next eighty years!_  
  
Kibum has always been good at putting his foot down. So he always gets his way. And this time he gets his way too, he gets to lose his better half, gets to let go, gets to be let go of.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _I miss you I miss you I miss you._  
  
If his landlord wouldn't charge him for the new paint job, that's what would decorate all the walls of his bachelor pad, from ceiling to floor, cabinet to countertop, in black permanent marker.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Kibum drops his bag on the floor and skips the kitchen, opting to instead burrow straight into his sheets, hat and jacket and all. He stares at the monsters that the tree branches draw out next to his standing wardrobe and listens to the muffled noises from upstairs.  
  
 _Thump thump thump thump thump thump._ That must be the younger of the two kids racing to watch TV after finishing his homework. He hears a woman raise her voice. _Andy don't run_ , he thinks she says. Although maybe it's Henry. Or Benny. It's a little hard to tell when they've got a ceiling and some floorboards between them.  
  
He wiggles his phone out of his pocket so it stops poking into his hip and places the thing on the pillow next to his nose.  
  
  
  
  
I miss you. I miss you, I miss you.  
  
  
  
  
It's just that while he looked back at Kibum over their twin Americanos with an expression of _I think I might understand but no, not really I don't but if you say so then that's okay_ , he never told Kibum you don't measure loneliness in sips and spoonfuls. And it was the one time Kibum thought it might have been a better idea to be dating Jonghyun instead. Because Jonghyun would yell at him (and he did). Jonghyun would look at him with wide accusing eyes, would cry, would hurt out loud. Because Jonghyun takes as much as he gives.  
  
Jonghyun wouldn't leave him looking down into his own mug with and at something that might have been disappointment.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The phone rings. It's their song.  
  
The screen lights up blue and beautiful, and he has it pushed tightly against his ear as soon as it happens. But he doesn't pick up right away; he waits it out, a breath, two breaths, so he doesn't seem as painfully eager. And then he picks up.  
  
  
"Hello?"  
  
  
Kibum makes sure to answer in English, uninterested but polite. He glances at his bedside clock. Twenty minutes later than usual...three days and twenty minutes. The calls are coming less regularly now, more spaced out, shorter, no longer as on time.  
  
He gets it, he does.  
  
  
 _Hi Bum. Have you eaten dinner yet?_  
  
  
And Kibum curls up, and his lip quivers, and he presses a hand over his eyes. His voice gets low and thick but he stops himself from lapsing into Korean: "Yeah. I ate."  
  
 _Are you sick? You sound different._  
  
"Caught a cold. No big deal." It comes out more gruff than he intended.  
  
 _You guys are hitting record lows over there, right? Wear more clothes._  
  
Says the person who falls sick more often than me, he thinks.  
  
 _Kibum?_  
  
Why do you get to be like this?  
  
 _Are you okay? I'm sorry I couldn't call—_  
  
  
"YOU'RE SO STUPID!" He finally erupts.  
  
  
He screams it out the way he'd always wanted to, and what he gets in return is a stunned silence and then a stumbling confused apology.  
  
  
 _Wh-what? I-I know I should've called sooner but you know how my boss is! W-we recently—oh, wait, is it about—I'm sorry I forgot to pack you your gloves! I know they're your favorite and they're expensive, I didn't mean—I'm sorry, I didn't even realize they're still here mixed in with my things until—_  
  
  
"You're stupid. You're so stupid! Why the fuck are you so _stupid_?!"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jinki Jinki Jinki.  
  
You're stupid but you're mine.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _I miss you._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
